One Mile Per Ex

July is full of anniversaries for me. I already wrote about the anniversary of my first-ever road race, but there are others: July 3^rd marked 10 years since I first met Husband; July 13^th I notched 10 years as an employee with my company; and yesterday, July 31^st, was the 10 year anniversary of when Husband and I shared our first kiss (which lasted, deliciously, for hours). 

Unfortunately, I’m still in San Francisco and therefore we were unable to stage a reenactment of that charmed night, in a small cabin room somewhere along the Jersey Shore. I can conjure it up in my memory, remembering how breathless and happy I was to kiss this man, how I didn’t mind his stubble which reddened my chin and cheeks, how I knew in my bones even then that we were standing together at the beginning of a fabulous, never-ending journey. 

Before I met Husband, I lived in Sacramento for a year, and during that time I learned to appreciate the Central Valley, and that to which it gave me easy access: Yosemite National Park, Lake Tahoe, San Francisco, Berkeley, Napa Valley and the rest of California Wine Country. And of course, California boys. So today, I ran my three miles (Geary Street to Market Street to the Embarcadero to Battery Street back to Market/Geary) in honor of my three CA exes, one mile for each. If I was going for perfect symmetry, I would tell you one mile was sexy-but-unavailable, another was stoned-and-abusive, and the last one was cheating-on-his-wife. (Thankfully, I’ve never known miles to have such qualities, which could be why I’ve never broken up with running.) Every step of my commemorative run was punctuated with one of two words: good or riddance. 

The only block of time I had for a workout today was immediately after lunch, but before I had to report to set-up duty at our convention-capping dinner party. This meant I was running at 2 in the afternoon, after a heav[enl]y lunch of Dungeness crab salad, Dungeness crab tagliatelle and two glasses of sauvignon blanc. (I was dining with publisher, author, agent.) My rationale for the pre-run wine was this: I’ll also drink 32 ounces of this sparkling water, and call it even. Needless to say, I was slow. 3.2 miles took me over 34 minutes, which was a little more time than I wanted to spend with my three exes, tipsy or not.